


do not go gentle into that good night

by orphan_account



Series: Historia Gaea [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M, Gen, Historical Hetalia, M/M, Off-screen Character Death, also. just so we're clear., dont read if u like him, eyes emoji, felis an ass here, helena highkey a milf, helena is a bicon., implied/reference parental absence/neglect, implied/referenced emotional neglect, marcus tries so hard..., probable historical innacuracy, referenced Infanticide, unhealthy mother-child relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 03:15:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20808878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Parenthood is strange, to a Nation. An act so human, so alien, experienced by so many of their people, and yet - it meant that they were fading, soon to be replaced.There have been many attempted solutions to the problem of children. Helena's wasn't special, but it was far from common.-------Vaguely follows some of the highlights from the life of Ancient Greece as in relation to her children. Deals heavily in my own headcanons. Explanations will be provided in end notes.**READ TAGS FOR CONTENT WARNINGS**





	do not go gentle into that good night

_ Parenthood is strange, to a Nation. An act so human, so alien, experienced by so many of their people, and yet - _

_ To beget an heir that would need parenting at all meant near certain death for their kind. _

_ It meant that they were fading, soon to be replaced. _

_ Any cities or regions graced with a personification did well enough when left to their own devices. Colonies took the form of children as often as they did not, and when they did - they were colonies. To be subjugated, settled, exploited for trade and commerce, but never claimed, much less raised. _

_ There have been many attempted solutions to the problem of children. _

_ Some, like Romulus-Rome, born of wolves and seven hills, seldom let a child past their first day, silencing many babes in their cribs. _

_ Some, like Yao-China, of blood and rivers, were borne no children, but claimed those they wanted as they liked. _

_ And some, like Helena-Athens-Byzantium, were oddities, plain and simple. _

_ She bore three children that would walk as Nations, but of course her story does not start with them. It should be told from the beginning, as she deserves. _

_ Helena was small, and bony, and not as strong as the brothers and sisters that constituted her neighbors. They were faster than her, and took wicked pleasure in her torment, just as she did in theirs. _

(What? You thought she was good? Preposterous. There is no Nation free of sin.)

_ She was called Helene-Cecropia then, for the half-snake, half-man told to have been her first king, and it suited her, for snakes were said to whisper wisdom of the earth. _

_ Then she was Helene-Athens after the goddess from long ago, protectorate of all that is civilized. _

_ So that is what Demosthenes-Mycenae had meant when he spoke of coming into yourself, the feeling of newfound rightness thrumming within her. She could feel the change within her, the transition from girl to woman, agonizingly slow for humans but lightning fast for her. _

_ There were wars, and rebellions, and monarchy and aristocracy and anarchy and tyranny and democracy, and through it all Helene-Athens just watched. Sometimes she would smile, but often she would not, taking careful note of everything that happened. _

_ She fought with Darius-Persia to the east, and then Kalisto-Sparta to the north, and in the end cared for neither because in war there is no victor and she knew it. _

_ A new power was rising to the west. _

_ A charming man, calling himself Romulus-Rome. Helene was intrigued - it was rare she met a man who’s eyes lit up at the prospect of debating whatever came to mind with her, a woman. Rarer yet was a man who delighted at the fact that he could barely keep up with her, and yet here he was. _

_ He became less novel with time, a familiar face, but with the death of Hatshepsut-Aegyptos to the south and the birth of her son, Romulus came to Helene and asked her to become his wife. _

_ She accepted, because he had asked instead of ordered, like so many others would have, and she enjoyed his company, and had grown to love him, and with that she became Helena-Athens. _

_ You must understand, to go from being Athens to Eastern Rome was not the natural order of things. That half of the Empire may have been where her heart of Athens resided, but in the natural order of things it was the only connection she had - not enough to transfer the ties of Nationhood. _

_ Truth be told, she should have been long dead by the time East split from West, and the only reason she still yet lived was because she had married the forever of Romulus-Rome centuries earlier. Before this, they had always stood on equal grounds to each other, and he consulted her often and always for matters concerning her. _

_ Not in this though. Not in this. _

_ By now Romulus noticed his beloved wife ailing, and for the first time in their very long marriage, he acted without permission. _

_ He went behind her back, and using all of the magic at his disposal (and quite a bit that wasn’t - of all the Grecian city states still living, Helena was the only one that remained when he was done), he bound her Nationhood to the eastern half of his newly split empire. _

_ Helena was _ furious _ , calling it perverse and going against the natural order of things, a transgression against the will of the gods, but even as she raged she felt better than she had in centuries, and she found it difficult to keep the anger for long. _

_ It was not too long after that Helena found herself expecting a child, and a Nation at that. _

(The idea that Nations can only bear Nations is as new as it is untrue.)

_ She knew that it would be a boy, and she knew that he would be Greek as she no longer was, and she knew the father was Romulus - all this in moments, before anybody would have guessed she was with child, even herself, had she been human. _

_ Romulus was at first troubled, but the child being Greek seemed to placate him, and he was happy enough when the boy was born. _

_ However, when he went to hold him, the newborn wails turned to cries of pain. Horrified, he found that because his empire of Rome had conquered Greece, and that was what he was, he could not even touch him without the infant feeling all the pain that accompanied such an event. _

_ Still, Helena began to grow again, because Nations did not really have control over their children of like. They either had them or they didn’t, and Helena, it seemed, would have them. _

_ This child would be Roman, she could feel it, feel them revolting against her very blood. She tasted bitter tears at that- not just for the child she would never be able to hold, but for the father who may well kill them. _

_ Romulus, though, was by this point beginning to weaken and he knew it. Helena had not told him of her condition, but he came to her regardless, making vows for the child’s safety. _

_ Lovino-Naples was born without breath, just as Helena had feared he would be. The second Romulus took him up in his arms, his infant tears filled the room. _

_ That was the last she ever saw of the boy while his father still lived. _

_ And then, to her immense surprise, she realized that she was pregnant once more. Helena didn’t understand - she had produced heirs enough for her and Romulus both, Greece and Rome, what else was there? Even amongst her past lovers, they either still lived or had faded into one another or had children of their own to carry on their legacies. _

_ Yet still the not-yet-a-child was there, growing, and with every passing day she felt it suck her life away, and she understood. _

_ Lovino-Naples may be the eldest between the two, but he would not get his due as such. It was this one, who Helena knew already would be her final child, who everyone would see as the true child of Rome and hail as his successor. _

_ She cast her gaze to Lovino-Naples’ future, and, weak as she was, she wept once more for the lonely and bitter life he would lead. He would find moments of happiness, but they were just that - momentary. _

_ When the day came, Helena barely had it left within her to birth the child. Where his brother had been born without breath, Feliciano-Venice was born without life at all, and she screamed for him to be taken away. Try as others might to tell her otherwise, it was her own self preservation, not maternal instincts, that had lead her to do so. Every moment with him in the room had been agony, pure and simple. _

_ Later Romulus would tell her of the servants’ confusion at being instructed to carry an infant’s corpse all the way back to the watery canals of Venice. _

_ She laughed at that, cold and hard and humourless in the way no mother ever should of her son, and he blinked. Helena saw how, where her age had whitled her down to bone and cunning, his had made him soft, yearning for an impossible world of happy endings. _

_ Certainly, she thought, it was why he had been so enchanted with the notion of an all loving God and Heaven, taken to it so fast that the old prayers were still on his lips at his conversion. How quick he was, to forget his own father, all-eternal War, for whom he still fought every day. _

_ Helena knew better. New gods came with every age, every empire. She had seen it happen, her very name was proof to it. _

_ She told him bitterly of how Feliciano-Venice would kill her. He would not even strike the killing blow himself, as would at least be proper, but he would strangle her ports and trade for centuries, making himself rich off raiding her gilded city of Byzantium before returning on the same ships and asking to trade. When she finally did die, after centuries of agonizing suffocation, he would be glad for it, and take her killer for his lover. _

_ Romulus recoiled as if struck, for his wife’s predictions always came to pass, and Helena was satisfied but not yet finished. _

_ She cursed him then, not with magic or malice but with truth. _

_ She was not longer Greek, and never would be again, but neither was she Roman, or anything at all. She saw it, and her two youngest sons saw it, and now they could not even be in the same room as each other without pain. _

_ As Helena spoke, her anger grew, until she was screaming and raging at him. In prolonging her life, she said, Romulus had cost her her brothers and sisters, using their lives and Nationhoods to bind her to a city and an empire that would never be hers, tasting the name of a god she did not believe in. _

_ Helena was not a woman much taken to regrets, and harsh though her words may have been, she said them with clarity of mind and did not take them back. _

_ Romulus, in like, told her that he would do it all the same a dozen times over if it meant waking up and knowing she still walked the earth. _

_ Her rage simmered, and cooled, because she was a Nation and not prone to her own extremes for long. She was not happy that this was now their lot, she made sure he knew that, but they would work with it. It was all they had. _

_ She instructed him to raise his children however he desired, but not to tell them of the mother they would never have. She in turn would do the same with her own son. _

_ It pained them both, that their children were the one thing they would be unable to share, but it was better, so they thought, for them not to know what they were denied. _

_ Romulus became Marcus and returned to his city-heart of Rome, raising his sons as grandchildren and taking on other lovers. The last one was hardly new, and Helena did not mind - it was not as if she did not do the same. _

_ Helena left Athens for the first time since becoming Eastern Rome. She came to Byzantium, gracing the palace apartments her husband had so lovingly had constructed for her. _

_ Her son was waiting for her there. _

_ For all the time he had lived, he had gone nameless. It was a father’s place to name his sons, but Romulus-Marcus had only been able to hold him an instant. _

_ He was still just a babe, as though waiting obediently for his mother to nurse him before beginning to grow. _

_ Helena named him Herakles, not for the man whom everyone would claim as her greatest hero but because it meant “ _ glory from Hera _ ”, the mother goddess of old, and of all her children, this one was well and truly hers. _

_ Marcus did not survive the century. His death was painful, city-heart set alight, but not as painful as trying to imagine Lovino-Naples. Marcus had always favoured the deceptively sweet-tempered Feliciano-Venice, and the young half brother Romeo-Seborga, or the pious Mary-Vatican. How was he to know that Marcus could see Helena in his face, and his own soft-heartedness in his every action? _

_ Helena mourned Marcus, but did not weep for him. He had raised his children poorly, and that was a crime she could not forgive. _

_ Alderic-Germania came to her walled jewel of the sea not long after. She had known of his coming, and sent Herakles and his maid on a short trip to learn of trade and sailing, and the other servants were to visit whatever family they had and take double pay for their troubles. _

_ The apartments stood empty when the knock came at the door. _

_ To Alderic-Germania’s surprise, she let him in herself and bade him to sit, offering him cheese and wine. When he almost denied her, she told him she knew well enough the face of her husband’s killer, and he made himself humble before her. _

_ He still struggled to speak as Helena gazed evenly at him over the brim of her goblet. Finally, she asked if he knew who she was. _

_ Startled, he looked up. “ _ Byzantium _ ,” he replied. _

_ She shook her head. “ _ Before that _ .” _

_ “ _ Helena, _ ” he answered, after some consideration. “ _ Just as I am Alderic _ .” _

_ She nodded. “ _ Very good. Now, let me have this to ask of you. I know that Germanics burned Rome. But how fared Alderic and Marcus? _ ” _

_ He told her that they were mourning that which had not yet come to pass. _

_ Helena laughed and shook her head. That had merely been him, she said. Marcus had known of his death and made peace with it long before they had ever met. _

_ She invited Alderic to listen to an old tale, in the custom of her people. Her first people, she added, and he understood. He accepted. _

_ Helena invoked the Muses, as had not been done in generations, and began. _

_ Long ago during the time of gods and heroes, when Romulus had still been a republic, he had asked Helena how he would die. _

_ It was an idle thought, but she warned him that it was a dangerous one. _

_ He brushed her off and said he cared not for danger, only an answer. _

_ She was younger then, and foolish, thinking herself a wise priestess or oracle of the gods. Which one she did not know, but she obliged him anyways, and in her mind’s eye began to read the pages of his future. _

_ Romulus, she said, would die at the hands of his final and dearest lover. _

_ He was only mildly troubled by this, stroking that patchy thing which he called a beard, thinking it made him look like the philosophers he so idolized. _

_ He asked if his killer loved him, if they were apparently so endeared to him. _

_ Yes, Helena answered. Yes, he will love you to the end of his days. _

_ Romulus did not ask why he was then killed, leaving it at that, and then the story finished. _

_ She offered to tell Alderic of his future, outline the geography of his genealogy not yet born, north to south, east to west. _

_ He declined as politely as was possible in the situation, saying that the future would happen no matter if he knew what it contained or not, and he would rather be taken by surprise than be lead grimly to his fate. _

_ Helena nodded, and he left, and that was that. She wished she still had the option, to just… _ choose _ not to see. _

_ The future came to her unbidden, as it so often did since the birth of her first son. It used to be that she could control what she saw, focusing on just a moment, a glimpse of what lay ahead, but no longer. _

_ She knew every choice she would make, every person she would bury, man and Nation alike. She saw her own life ending, how she stood and faced Sadiq, ordering him to kill her so that she was not forced to endure a drawn out death, so that her son could become something more than a shell. Saw him crying, dragging Herakles kicking and screaming out of the palace. _

_ Saw Venice laugh at the news, taunting Sadiq that he could not even kill a powerless old woman without tears, jeer and say he was lying about how she had stood straight and tall and seemed to tower over him. _

_ Heard Venice say that no, she had knelt and begged for her life, pleading with him to spare her son, only for Sadiq to laugh mercilessly and cleave her head from her shoulders, taking her son as a slave. He was, after all, simply a barbarian from the east. _

_ That was how it was written in the history-books of Nations for centuries, until her second son, who was by then Lovino-Romano, had enough and did his best to set it to rights, seeking aid from Herakles-Greece. _

_ He’d learned of his mother since her passing, he would say, but Feliciano-Veneziano had not. Herakles, tamest of her blood, would nod and say it was better, for she’d had no love of him, and Lovino would be taken aback, shocked but not unhappily so - it was a rare soul indeed who saw past his brother’s charms. _

_ Herakles would not have to say a word to remind him that their mother was Venice’s first victim. _

_ Together, they put her at peace for the first time in five hundred years. _

_ Helena closed her eyes, shutting out future and present alike, satisfied with what it held. _

_ A tug on her skirts. _

_ She looked down. Herakles had returned. _

_ His maid apologized, breathless, but she was dismissed quickly. It was alright, Helena said, he was her son. All he wanted was to hear a story. _

_ The future was gilded with blood and gold, but the present was here and now, and Helena would not become a witless seer, blind to everything but that which she could never change. _

_ She had a son to raise. _

**Author's Note:**

> A bunch of notes that you don't have to read if you don't want to, but provide some historical/character background. Please tell me what you think!
> 
> A lot of the "history" in the earlier parts actually comes from myths. Obviously, Athens was never ruled by someone who was half-snake, but in some myths the first people to inhabit Athens were half-snake and Helena is a fan.
> 
> Mycenae is a term you'll hear a lot in reference to early Greece - either before or during the Greek Dark ages. They're referenced in the Illiad, as one of the kings is the king of Mycenae. To be honest, Helena interacting with him isn't very realistic, seeing as Mycenaean Greece was the predecessor to Classical Greece, and sort of died out before them, but this is a Hetalia fanfiction not an academic paper so I took some creative liberties.
> 
> I think i named him Demosthenes because it meant something along the lines of like "power of the people" but tbh I forget. Sparta is Kalisto because that has something to do with beauty, I think? And I thought it was funny to have the one who cares more about war than beauty to have a name referencing it.
> 
> Hatshepsut-Aegyptos is, of course, Ancient Egypt, Hatshepsut meaning "noblest of women" or the like and "Aegyptos" being what the ancient greeks referred to Egypt as.
> 
> The reason her name changes from Helene to Helena is because Helene is the Greek way of spelling it, and Helena is the Latinized form. 
> 
> The whole Thing with Venice is because yes, it was in fact the Ottoman Empire that conquered Constantinople, but that was only possible because the Republic of Venice had been chipping away at the Byzatine Empire since basically the fall of the Roman Empire, and I think that they either participated in or lead a notable sacking of Constantinople in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries that really weakened the empire as a whole? Don't quote me on that though, I could be wrong.
> 
> Note that Helena is a heavily unreliable narrator when it comes to Sadiq. She has....I wouldn't call it a soft spot for him, per se, but for someone that she's pretty much always known was going to be the one to kill her, she's remarkably keen to invite him over for dinner, in a metaphorical sense.
> 
> If you actually got through all that then I commend you. Please leave a comment with what you thought!


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